


Behind the Circuit

by The_Exile



Category: Phantasy Star (Video Games), Phantasy Star III
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Marriage, Post-Canon, Sean ending with a twist, Spoilers, androids feel love too, mild crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4537977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mieu gets bored waiting and asks Wren to marry her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind the Circuit

Mieu had always been there.

Rhys had been the one to find her wandering lost and purposeless around the mountain lakeside of Landen, covered in scars and hearing hundreds of little error messages inside, both from the battle she had lost most of her memories of and the countless skirmishes with passing predators who saw her confusion and weariness, saw a wounded animal ripe for the kill. He had saved her from an inevitable death that day. She had saved him so many times in the heat of battle and he repaid the favour too many times to keep count any more. 

Rhys had been given two options for marriage. Two young women who loved him, who had come to him, one for whom he had risked his life, one who had risked hers for him. Viable, human women who could bear him children. Women with enough rank in society to know how to cope with being Queen. Sensible, practical choices. 

Rhys had married the woman called Maia and born a son called Ayn to be his heir. Mieu had been his retainer and bodyguard, and when he was called to a quest following a great crisis, Mieu had acted as his adventuring companion, exactly as she had for Rhys. He had been inserted into the same place in the standing adventuring party as if there were no essential difference between the two. Herself, she had been kept in pristine condition by the finest Orakian royal engineers, far better than the state she had been discovered in. Maybe better than new, although she could no longer remember ever being new. Evidently, she was in good enough condition to be immediately fielded again. She was treated no differently, so she treated her new ward no differently.

Mieu assisted Ayn in rescuing a girl called Thea who was the daughter of Lyle, who she remembered from the previous party. Then he fought against another girl called Sari in a potentially lethal battle, which apparently earned a respect from her that later turned into adoration. She was also the daughter of someone she had fought beside in the past. History repeated itself and, inevitably, Thea and Sari asked for Ayn's hand in marriage.

Mieu was always asked for her opinion in these matters. She voted for the bride who was likely to produce heirs with the prettiest hair colour. Having no particular emotional interest in the matter but the same amount of aesthetic appreciation as a full human personality, the decision made as much sense to her as any other. She would inevitably have to look at these heirs for the rest of her shelf life.

Ayn and Thea's child was called Sean. The events of the previous two generations had never truly been resolved at their root and had only secretly festered and become worse, so around the time Sean came of age and his father started to slow down, he was asked to go and deal with another in the endless list of crises. No differently, Mieu was asked to come along.

Sean had been the one to help her deal with a chance meeting with another android in her series, Miun. She was several hundred years older than her and critically damaged. Her inner workings, sparking live, spilled out onto the sand. Her logic circuits were malfunctioning to the extent that she believed Sean to be Orakio. Mieu fulfilled her duty to deactivate and salvage her. Although her emotions could often appear badly programmed, more to do with timescale, difficulty to repair and lack of any real ties to the world around her than any lack of complexity in her personality learning algorithms, Sean had understood that this had hit her hard, because it was something she had a reason to empathise with. It was like seeing her own face as it would be at the moment she finally died in battle. 

Mieu was not sure if it was a coincidence when, rather soon afterwards, she found out from a mystic in the only island where dragons were not extinct, that she was capable of learning a legendary technique. She was psychically sensitive and could be taught techniques, unlike earlier android models, but should not have possessed the raw psychic capacity, strength or variety to learn anything truly exceptional such as the fabled Grantz technique. Later, at the end of Sean's quest, after Dark Force had been driven from their world for good, her mastery of that technique had saved their lives. She had even managed to repel a full-strength, unrestrained Megido technique with it, a destructive blast that had torn apart a city. Sean had been the one to use the technique. Mieu did not consider him responsible for this. The technique had been planted in his mind involuntarily by Dark Force's power, that would have entirely possessed a lesser will, and he had not been given any time or chance to learn to control it. 

Dark Force had possessed a pilot and destroyed the ship's ability to navigate but another ship, believed to have been destroyed already by Dark Force, appeared to rescue them.

Wren told Mieu that he did not trust the ship and could still scan traces of the same energy wavelength and life force pattern that he picked up from Dark Force. It might be residual signals from the dying entity but it might not be, and in any case, there was more rebuilding from crises to be done, more ship maintenance, more heirs to protect. A nigh-on immortal android's work was never done.

Mieu realised at that point how important Wren was to her, as the only other person who could comprehend, let alone match, her own lifespan, and as someone who shared and understood her ceaseless duties. The other android, who was built in the shape of a human male figure and whose personality was apparently based around typical human male emotional development, would always be beside her. She wasn't sure if he understood that or what he felt about it, if anything, if he even had a fully functional range of up-to-date personality algorithms. The fact that he refused to let her take a look inside implied either that he had some kind of taciturn, shy or embarassed side to him, or that his inner workings were very, very proprietary, possibly a prototype.

Mieu had been watching men and women courting, proposing and marrying for nearly a century now and she understood that the whole process would probably be a lot quicker and more efficient if she took the initiative.

"Wren," she asked, after knocking on the door to his weapon maintenance room and walking in, "When are you going to ask me to marry you?"

He did not blink. She had seen him blink and knew he was perfectly capable of it, when it was socially necessary.

"From what I have seen, the optimum time would be in approximately five and a half seconds," he replied. Then he dug around in his chest cavity and retrieved a ring, perfectly crafted to comfortably fit her fingers. It was made of Planar-grade Laconia. He went down on one knee in a gesture perfectly copied from Rhys.

After the duration she had calculated to be the most socially acceptable, Mieu replied, "I accept."


End file.
